Company Blog

Following on from the previous article “How do you add value as a leader?” we are going to focus on how a leader should be spending their time.

Leadership is time-intensive. There’s not enough time to do everything and an effective leader must prioritise.

Patrick McKenna and David Maister (First Among Equals. 2002. The Free Press) have listed their top tips.

1. Spend unscheduled, informal time with individual people, serving as coach and helping them develop themselves.
2. Be active in the development of junior people by suggesting new assignments so that they can build their skills.
3. Connect with customers, grow relationships and monitor customer satisfaction.
4. Help team members differentiate themselves in ways that clients recognize and value.
5. Help your people stay current with the trends affecting the industry.
6. Monitor performance and results with group members and discuss results with them.
7. Devise methodologies to capture and share knowledge.
8. Help your group to explore new and innovative ways of using technology to better deliver services and reduce costs.
9. Spend time recruiting, interviewing and attracting new staff members.
10. Spend time following up and actively helping colleagues execute their planned activities..
11. Initiate and plan regular meetings to collectively plan activities and initiatives.
12. Conduct formal performance appraisals with senior people.
13. Conduct counseling sessions with people on the basis of these performance appraisals.
14. Celebrate individual and team achievements – both the minor wins and the major successes.

There are many activities a leader feels that they should be spending time on, however to be truly effective it's important to prioritise and the above list provides guidance.